Saturday, December 2, 2006

The Gods Must Be Dadaists

Well, your responses to my rant about the mess and ick of family life made it clear - not that it wasn't already - that we’ve all got shit stories. And pee stories and snot stories and vomit stories and bum-wiping stories and all measure of grossness to recount. Our attachment to these stories is, I’m sure, what makes parents borderline-intolerable to people who do not have children and whose idea of pleasant social chit-chat doesn’t include casual tales of household mayhem involving fecal matter. But we can’t help ourselves, can we? Shit doesn’t just happen, when you’re a parent – it HAPPENS. Shit announces its arrival with a fanfare of farts and then runs and explodes and splatters itself onto the scene. It’s kind of hard to ignore. And so, yes, it figures prominently in our stories.

Shit - and its supporting players, Snot and Mess - were, as story-fodder, good to me this week. It was a low week; it has been a low/dark/gray couple of weeks. I’ve been struggling with some strain of existential influenza and it has darkened my mood and dampened my writing, kept me trapped in an undertow of gloomy thoughts and morose reflections. Until the other day, when the shit and snot and mess hit the proverbial fan and I realized, suddenly, that this parenting gig really is one great big fucked-up messy monkey festival – insanely stressful and demanding and, wouldn't you know it? really, really funny. Oh, epiphany! Oh, insight! Huzzah for Her Bad Mother, finally getting – really getting – what ancient dramatists and third-rate screenwriters and countless bloggersmore enlightened than I have understood all along: this shit’s funny. Don’t take it too seriously.

I won’t say that the sun suddenly burst through the clouds and thawed my chilled spirit. It didn’t. I’m still feeling, inexplicably, tired and gloomy. But a laugh was wrung out of me, and – AND – I found something to write about that was not heavy with angst and anxiety and relentlessly moody introspection. Shit! Mess! Lopburi monkeys! Comedy is, after all, literally (reading it from its original Greek - komos - as we must, for we are nothing if not pedantic, even when speaking of shit) a revel, a chaotic frolic. There is comedy in the shitty, messy frolic that is the care and feeding of young children. Write about the shit!

So I did. And we all felt better for it, didn’t we? (Cue collective sigh of contentment.)

My only regret was that the shitty, messy, Lopburi monkey morning that inspired my entirely unremarkable insights was not, end of the day, all that remarkably shitty. It was messy and chaotic and frustrating, but there was nothing extraordinary about that particular mess, that particular chaos. It was mundane chaos. Ordinary shit. Oh well, thought I – it’s still funny. It’s still revelatory. Hit publish.End of story, right? Ha. Would that it were. That story had one more chapter, and I now have evidence for what I have always suspected: that the gods are watching me and reading my thoughts and looking for any available opportunity to mock me. How else to explain the fact that this morning, mere days after my revelation about shit and my reflections concerning the mild corresponding disappointment that I didn’t have a better shit story to support that revelation, I would find myself on the receiving end of a projectile shit, round and firm and disgusting and approximately the size of a softball, launched from the diaper of a bucking WonderBaby and onto my forehead?

Let's see that again, in slo-mo: a poo - a great big spherical shit - launched from the unfortunately springy diaper 'neath my excessively bouncy child's rear end into the air and squarely onto my waiting forehead, where it rested for an interminable second before plopping, with a disturbingly gooshy thud, onto the floor.

I sincerely hope that you, dear readers, are laughing, because I - still recoiling from the shock of having had shit on my face and preoccupied with the task of disinfecting my head - have not yet been able to muster a laugh.

Somebody better find this shit funny. If you do, could you please remind me again that it is funny and that I will, someday, laugh at this myself? Because that shitball seems to have knocked that newly discovered appreciation for potty humour right out of me.

**Because you asked...How It Happened: WonderBaby has to be changed on the floor, because her mobility and strength and resistance forbid balancing her on a table, even with multiple strapping devices. So, I was on the floor, squatting above her, my head MUCH too close to her bucking form, the bouncing of which caused the change pad, and my hand, and the diaper and shitball to fly upward INTO MY FACE. Which from now on will be held as far back from the fly-zone as possible, and will be protected by plastic goggles and a helmet.

56 Comments:

I am in fact laughing and covering my mouth and trying to laugh silently, resulting in dolphin-esque squeaks (I know you'll have fun with that...) because I AM AT WORK HERE, DAMMIT! Gah. There needs to be some sort of warning sticker for this kind of shit. Online and IRL.

I'm laughing enough for both of us HBM. And until you can laugh at yourself, I will promise to laugh at you - the most affectionate, I-love-you laugh possible. It is funny, it is all funny, because it is so absolutely unbelievable, this parenting thing.

I'm laughing enough for both of us HBM. And until you can laugh at yourself, I will promise to laugh at you - the most affectionate, I-love-you laugh possible. It is funny, it is all funny, because it is so absolutely unbelievable, this parenting thing.

I'm laughing enough for both of us HBM. And until you can laugh at yourself, I will promise to laugh at you - the most affectionate, I-love-you laugh possible. It is funny, it is all funny, because it is so absolutely unbelievable, this parenting thing.

I laughed out loud, something I don't do all that often when reading, so Trillian has asked me what I'm reading--now she's laughing too. It's always best to laugh at the shit. We've had the raisins on the floor that freaked us out because we were sure they were shit (and vice versa--ew!). I think I've got at least three separate posts discussing shit incidents... and I just haven't been blogging that long.

Sometimes (that is, most of the time), it really is a choice of laughing or crying. I try to go with the former as much as I can.

I am laughing. I am laughing hard. I am laughing out loud. Stranger than fiction. What an image. When I was listening to Madeleine's wheezy chest once, she vomitted on my head. I didn't laugh then but I laugh about it now.

How it happened - WonderBaby has to be changed on the floor, because her mobility and strength and resistance forbid balancing her on a table, even with multiple strapping devices. So, on the floor, squatting above her, my head MUCH too close to her bucking form, the bouncing of which caused the change pad, and my hand, and the diaper and shitball to fly upward INTO MY FACE. Which from now on will be held as far back from the fly-zone as possible, and will be protected by plastic goggles and a helmet.

Ok that is gross. I was thinking that had never happened to me, which is true, but I do have an incident with poo trailing up the stairs and other incidents with baby poo on carpet. These are truly the darkest moments of my motherhood.

Googles are a good idea but we use face shields in our chem labs. I think that might really be what you need.

OH MY GOD!!! *she says while wiping the coffee off the computer screen that shot out of her nose when she read this post*

Honey, I am a nurse, I have seen some shit, a lot of shit, all manner of size, texture, consistency and odor. I have had 4 babies, I have seen some really funky shit, but I have NEVER and I mean NEVER had shit hit me in the head. WOW, you have quite the way of telling a story. Thank you for the laughs!

Oh yeah, I'm laughing, and so is my husband as I read this post aloud for dramatic effect. When the Kraken was all of 2 weeks old she projectile shat onto my chest during a middle of the night diaper change. It was not fun, but it is now very funny. Once you've grown back new skin over the spot on your forehead where you've scraped yours off, you'll be laughing too.

I'm laughing, but only because I've been there, sort of. When Cordy was a baby, I got hit with projectile shit as well. We were changing her messy diaper on a day she wasn't feeling well, and I was right in the firing zone. We had no idea she wasn't done yet, and she gave a loud grunt and well, let's just say I was covered from neck to knees.

I sat there stunned for a moment, and then Aaron and I both laughed. That's all you can do sometimes is laugh.

Oh mama. That's one for the memory book. I cannot match that that, though we have to do our 20 month old twins' diapers on the floor too, and I'll never forget the day I lost my balance while leaning over a boy and ended up with my (sweatered) elbow in a shitty diapers. Brought new meaning to the image "up to my elbows in shit". Today I went to draw the bath after having just undressed the boys, and I came into the bedroom to find them both peeing into the floor-mounted heating grates. I'm still trying to figure out if I need to do anything about the urine that is now pooled in our ductwork. Yes, we all have our stories, don't we?

We were having dinner at friend's this weekend and after they put their four year old son to bed, he vomited spectactularly all over everything in his room necessitating several loads of laundry and an excessive HAZMAT cleanup. I thought to myself; I am in for an exposure to bodily functions the likes of which I have yet to imagine.

The Boy used to have projectile NEON GREEN shit (from all the fenugreek that I was taking). Everytime we went to the lactation consultant or to the hospital, he would cover the walls with green poo. Every. Single. Time. Got to a point where I would stand back and let him splatter other people, instead of me. I'm not a nice person...;-) I would warn them, though. They just didn't believe me.

The smell of shit is but another version of the sour-breast milk based scent, eau de Mommy! Both valuable for their resilience-building characteristics. Afterall, who signed up for a motherhood that was clean?

Oh. My. God. I'm so sorry we're all having such a fine laugh at your expense. Just think of all of the occasions when you'll be able to retell this story through her teen years. You may want to consider a hockey mask, though, until she's potty trained.

Now that was hysterical! I'm sure we're all laughing with you because we've been there.. in one form or another! I'm just disappointed that you didn't manage to get a photo of said disaster! Now THAT would have put me over the edge!

laugh, laugh, LAUGHING over here. Really. Gales of laughter. My face hurts and if you keep this up, I may actually regain some abdominal tone from all the chortling. Good luck disinfecting your head :-)